


Locked Out

by Waltzing



Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: #Entry 47, Alex is redeemable, M/M, jaylex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-02
Updated: 2014-03-02
Packaged: 2018-01-14 08:32:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1259782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Waltzing/pseuds/Waltzing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alternative Entry #47 "what-if" scenario.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Locked Out

**Author's Note:**

> First posted on the MH [Livejournal community](http://mh-kink.livejournal.com/557.html?thread=20013#t20013), September 2011, after a request for Alex/Jay "Angry, angry sexitiems". This was written shortly after Entry #47 was uploaded.

Alex slammed into the side of Jay's car, just half a second too late.

"Sorry, it's locked. Guess you can't get your keys... unless you give me the number."  
  
Alex glared at Jay and looked away. For a moment, Jay actually thought he was going to give him the number.   
  
Alex sighed. Then, without warning, he launched himself at Jay, pushing him bodily against the side of the car. Jay, taken aback, had no time to defend himself. His camera slipped from his hands and fell to the ground. He worried vaguely whether it was broken, but was distracted by Alex's hands, which were busy around the front of his jeans. For a fleeting second, Jay thought... but no, Alex had forced his hand into Jay's front pocket and triumphantly taken out Jay's own set of keys. He immediately turned to the driver's side door, but before he could put Jay's car key in the lock, Jay threw himself at him, swiping at the keys. In his attempt to keep them out of Jay's reach, Alex flung his arm back, and the keys flew out of his grasp and landed somewhere with a clatter. In the same instance, Alex and Jay overbalanced and fell to the ground in a tangle of limbs.  
  
Alex let out a gasp of pain as the back of his head hit the asphalt.   
  
"Shit" said Jay, who had fallen partly on top of him. "Are you okay?" He reached out a hand as if to get a better look at Alex's head, but Alex pushed him violently off of him.  
  
"What the  _fuck_ , Jay?" Alex sat up and rubbed at the back of his head. "Are you out of your mind?!" He sounded angrier than Jay had ever heard him, and that was saying something, considering the fight they'd had a few minutes earlier about Jay breaking into his house.  
  
Jay got to his feet, slightly dazed. His elbow hurt where he had landed on it, and his palms felt grazed. He realized he hadn't seen where his keys had landed. He offered a hand to Alex to help him up, but Alex just glared up at him and stayed where he was.  
  
He remembered his camera and retrieved it from where it had fallen. Luckily it didn't seem to be damaged. He set it on top of his car and went to look for his keys.   
  
A few minutes later, he still hadn't found them. He checked in the area several yards around his own car, underneath the car in the next parking space and around the edge of the building next to the parking lot.  
  
"Alex, do you have my keys?"  
  
"If I had your keys, why would I still be sitting here, locked out of my car?"  
  
"Can you at least help me find them?"  
  
Alex sighed again and got to his feet.   
  
"Did you see where they went?" Jay asked.  
  
"No, I was kinda busy at the time, you know? Being attacked by a  _complete psychopath_."  
  
Jay rolled his eyes but didn't respond. It probably wouldn't help the situation to point out that Alex had "attacked" him first.

Several minutes later, they still hadn't found the keys. Jay was frantically looking around the edges of the parking lot, while Alex was busy looking under all the cars.   
  
"You know, this would be a lot easier if we had a flashlight," said Jay.   
  
"Where's your flashlight Jay?"  
  
"Back at your apartment."  
  
Alex nodded. "Of course it is." He was now trying all the doors to Jay's car, and the trunk. He walked around and peered in through the driver's side window.  
  
Jay was getting seriously worried now. "This is crazy! Where the hell have they gone?" He examined the two doors in the wall of the nearby building, his brow furrowed. He looked up to ask Alex something, but saw that Alex was walking away from him, toward the road. "Alex? Where are you going?"  
  
"To find a rock."  
  
"Why..? Wait, no, Alex!" Jay ran after him. Alex was thoughtfully scouring the side of the road. Jay saw him bend down and pick up a rock the size of his fist. He walked back toward Jay, then passed him without a word, heading toward Jay's car. "I can't afford to replace my window, Alex!"   
  
Alex turned round. "Yeah? Well I can't afford to replace my goddammned car keys! This is your fault we're in this mess anyway. What do you expect me to do?"  
  
Jay ran after him, desperate. "Look, why can't we wait til morning? Maybe once it's light I'll find them easily. If I can't, I'll, I'll call out a mechanic or something and you can have your keys then."  
  
"And what do you want me to do in the mean time, huh? Even if I walked back to my apartment, I can't get in because my keys are locked in your piece-of-shit car!"  
  
Jay shrugged. He was surprised Alex would even want to go back to his apartment after that  _thing_  showed up there. "Maybe you could break-in?"  
  
"Like you did?"   
  
Jay looked away from him. Alex walked right up to the driver's side window, the rock in his hand.  
  
Jay suddenly had a revelation "Alex, stop. I just remembered something." Alex turned around and looked at Jay exasperatedly.  
  
"What?" he said, when Jay didn't say anything.  
  
"You already hate me, so what the hell." Jay shrugged. From his back pocket, he produced a small bronze door key. "I... I took it when I ran out of your apartment earlier."   
  
"You...'took' it?"  
  
"I thought it might be important."  
  
Alex held out his hand and Jay dropped the key into it. "What is it for?" Jay asked.  
  
Alex ignored him. He slowly closed his fingers over the key. As if coming to a decision, he looked back up at Jay, he said: "Come on. Let's go for a walk."

*

Jay felt like they had been walking for hours, although when he checked the time on his cellphone, he found it couldn't have been more than forty minutes. He had followed Alex out of the parking lot, alongside the main road for a long while before they turned off onto a tree-lined side road that led to a wooded area. There were no street lights here, so both of them were using light from their cells to help see where they were going.  
  
They had spent most of the time walking in silence: after Alex had ignored Jay's questions about where they were headed, Jay had given up trying to make conversation.   
  
He was still worried about his car: he guessed the keys had probably gone underneath the car next to his. He resolved to be back at the parking lot by first light: he didn't want anyone else finding his car keys before he did.  
  
He had taken his camera with him, but the tape had run out while they were walking, and all his spares were back in the trunk of his car.  
  
A short distance down the road, Alex turned off the path and into some woodland. Jay stopped in his tracks. "Where are you going?"  
  
"Follow me." Came Alex's voice from somewhere ahead in the darkness. Jay shone the light from his phone into the wood, but could barely make out Alex ahead of him.  
  
"No way, Alex. I'm not going in there. What if..." Jay couldn't say it. The thought of that...  _thing_  waiting for them in the woods was enough to make him not want to move a step further.  
  
Alex came back to him, looking exasperated. "Come on. It's safe. I haven't ever seen him in this area. That's why I chose it."  
  
Jay still looked unconvinced. Alex, looking strangely determined, grabbed Jay's wrist and pretty much dragged him in after him. Jay didn't have the energy or willpower to resist.  
  
They walked like that for a while, both training the light from their phones on the ground in front of them, avoiding tree roots and uneven ground. Jay still tripped every now and again. Alex, on the other hand, seemed to know the route pretty well.  
  
"Where are we going?" Jay was aware that his voice sounded small and scared in the giant emptiness of the wood, but he didn't care.  
  
"You'll see." Alex said. "We're nearly there."

*

Jay was relieved to find that the wood was thinning out into a large clearing. He shone the light from his phone ahead and saw a small, one-storey house. The windows were boarded up and from what he could see, the outside looked pretty dilapidated.  
  
Alex walked right up to the front door, produced the bronze key from his pocket and unlocked it. Jay followed uneasily.  
  
"What is this place?"  
  
Alex ignored him and pushed open the door, then bent down and picked up a flashlight from just inside the doorway. "You're the first person I've ever brought here".  
  
They walked down a narrow hallway, which looked trashed to Jay: parts of the floorboards were ripped up, and it was strewn dead leaves, food wrappers and old newspapers. Alex stopped in front of a door on the left, glanced back at Jay and then opened it and went in. Jay followed.  
  
Alex set the flashlight down, grabbed a matchbox and went round lighting a few candles around the room. "The power is out", he said, "so candles and flashlights are our only option. I don't usually come here at night, anyway."  
  
In the light and the gloom, Jay looked around. The walls were covered in maps, newspaper clippings and drawings similar to those he had watched Alex draw previously on his tapes. There were boxes of tapes, stacked high against the walls on one side. In one corner was a mattress, and in another a table covered with papers. Jay recognized Alex's handwriting on some of them.  
  
"Is this some kind of hideout or something?"  
  
"It's storage. All this stuff is related to the thing that's stalking us. I come here to look through it all and try and figure out what to do about this thing. How to get rid of it, what it's weaknesses are. That kind of stuff. I figure it's safer keeping it all here than in my apartment."  
  
Considering what had happened to his own apartment, Jay thought that was probably a good idea. Just then, he spotted a small medicine container: it looked a lot like the container of pills he had found in Brian's abandoned house all those months ago. He felt a little creeped out.

"Why have you brought me here, Alex?, he said. "I thought you were done helping me."  
  
Alex was quiet for a moment. Then, he said, "You wanted to know what the key led to. Now you know." He had his back to Jay and appeared to be aimlessly leafing through some old newspaper cuttings on the table. The candlelight flickered.  
  
"It's just, you've been so secretive. You could have just told me about this place. We didn't need to go wandering through woods in the dead of night." Jay realized if he had to leave by himself, he probably wouldn't make it out of the woods. He mentally kicked himself for not paying more attention to his surroundings on the way there.  
  
"You took the key - you obviously wanted to know. You chose to get involved, so now you're involved." Alex looked up at him, a slight sneer on his face. "Isn't this  _exactly_  what you wanted, Jay?", he said mockingly.  
  
Jay felt a flare of anger at this. "You  _know_  this isn't what I wanted. I never wanted any of this to happen! I've hated every moment of this since it began!"  
  
"Really? What with your stalking me and stealing my things, I got the impression you've been enjoying the chance to spy on me."  
  
Jay blushed. He had had a crush on Alex when they were at school together, but he had always thought Alex hadn't noticed. "If you just gave me the phone number, we wouldn't be in this mess in the first place," Jay muttered, hoping to change the subject.  
  
"If you hadn't  _stolen my keys_ -" Alex broke off suddenly, throwing up his hands in frustration, then placing them behind his head. He turned away from Jay. "I shouldn't have let you get involved. You only make things worse."  
  
Jay grabbed Alex's shoulder and turned him around, anger flaring. "Excuse me? "Let" me get involved?! It's your fault I'm involved, Alex! Don't forget who gave me the Marble Hornets tapes in the first place!"  
  
"You wanted them! You kept asking me for them again and again until I had to give in."  
  
"You didn't have to give them to me! You could have refused! You knew what was on those tapes for god's sake!"  
  
Alex looked away. "I guess... maybe I wanted someone to know what was going on. Maybe I wanted someone other than me to be involved."  
  
"Well congratulations, because now I'm involved, however much you hate that!" Jay was shouting now, all the anger he'd kept bottled up over the last few months pouring out. "I know you don't like it, but it's your fault I'm here, Alex! It's your fault my apartment burned down, it's your fault we're being stalked by men in masks. It's your fault that thing is after us.  _You're_  the one to blame for all this shit, you and no one else!"  
  
Alex lunged forward, grabbing Jay's shoulders and slammed Jay back against the wall.  
  
"You have  _no idea_! He hissed. "You don't know what's it been like, day after day, always looking over your shoulder. For  _years_ , Jay! Never being safe. So don't talk to me about how hard it's been for you. You don't have a fucking clue."

Alex's face was inches from Jay's own. He was breathing heavily, and Jay could practically feel his glare, the anger was so intense, so _focused_. Jay turned his face away from Alex's. He couldn't help noticing that he could feel Alex's breath against the side his face. Alex's fingers dug into Jay's shoulders, and his knee was between Jay's legs.  _Third time this night_ , Jay thought, as if from a distance.  _Since when had Alex taken up slamming people against walls?_  
  
Alex's expression changed from anger to something else as he realized Jay wasn't struggling against his grasp. He moved closer. "You want his, don't you?" He said quietly, leaning in. Jay looked back at him. He thought he could see something dangerous lurking behind Alex's eyes. "I always knew you did. You never could hide anything from me, Jay."  
  
Suddenly, Alex leaned in, pressing his mouth against Jay's in a bruising, demanding kiss. Jay, stunned, didn't react. One of Alex's hands came up to the back of Jay's head, and Alex pressed Jay fully against the wall. "Alex", Jay tried to say, but as he opened his mouth, Alex took that as invitation to deepen the kiss.   
  
Jay, however much he didn't want to admit it,  _wanted_  it. Though he never imagined it would be like this: both of them desperate and angry, and afraid. But he had nothing left any more, no reason not to go with his instinct, so, tentatively at first, and then with increasing conviction, he kissed Alex back. Alex made a noise of approval at this. He ran his fingers under the waistband of Jay's jeans, then grabbed Jay's belt loops and pulled their lower bodies hard against each other. Jay could feel how hard Alex was against his hip.  _We're really doing this_  he thought, dazedly, but then Alex pressed his hand against Jay's corresponding hardness and Jay lost all coherent thought.  
  
Somehow, they made it from the wall to the mattress in the corner of the room.   
  
Alex's roving hands had pulled off Jay's shirt and were busy undoing the zipper on his jeans. Jay revelled in his touch. If only this could have happened years ago, back when they were still friends, back before all this shit happened. Alex pressed Jay down into the mattress and eyed him, with something akin to a predatory look in his eyes. Jay reached up and carefully removed Alex's glasses, placing them on the floor beside the mattress. Alex looked a little surprised by the gentleness of the act, but not for long, as he bent down and kissed Jay with all he was worth, leaving Jay gasping against his mouth. At the same time, he shoved down Jay's jeans and boxers with one hand. Jay moaned as the cold air hit his heated skin, and writhed as Alex touched him, grinding against Alex, who was still fully clothed. A few moments of this was enough to bring Jay close to the edge, but just when he thought he couldn't hold on any longer, Alex sat up. "Turn over for me, Jay", he said, his voice deep and hoarse. He was looking down, instead of at Jay, and undoing his own fly and zipper. Jay also sat up.   
  
"Uh, have you got any, y'know, stuff?" Jay was glad that the tone of his voice sounded more confident than he felt. This would be his first time, but for Alex, he would do anything.  
  
Alex looked him in the eyes for a second, before leaning over to the paper-covered table and opening a drawer at the side. Jay felt unusually vulnerable, completely naked while Alex remained clothed, rummaging through the drawer.

He looked up at the ceiling, idly wondering how they had ended up like this, both of them fucked up and paranoid, but brought together by some strange force once more. He glanced at the top of the narrow closet in the corner of the room, and what he saw made his heart suddenly race, and cold sweat break out on his palms. There was a mask lying on the top of it. White, with black-painted features. Similar - but not the same - as Tim's mask.  
  
 _Shit_  
  
Jay leaped up and hurried started pulling his clothes.  
  
Alex turned around. "Jay? What the - where are you going?" Jay grabbed his shirt and made toward the door, but Alex was too fast for him: he grabbed Jay's upper arm and swung him round to face him. "What's the matter?". Jay couldn't help glancing up once more at the mask. It seemed to be grinning at him.  
  
Alex turned, following Jay's gaze. He looked back at Jay, understanding dawning in his eyes. "Brian's", he said.  
  
"What?"  
  
"It was Brian's. He's gone Jay. He's dead. I..." Alex turned away from him.  
  
"You... killed him?" Alex didn't answer. Jay went and sat back down on the mattress and put his face in his hands. "Oh god."  
  
Alex came and sat next to him. "There... there was nothing else I could do. He, he just wasn't himself any more. He was a different person. Like Tim. Like Amy."  
  
Jay looked up. "What? Do you mean...?"  
  
Alex sighed. "They got her too. There's nothing we can do for her any more, Jay. Nothing."  
  
"Nothing we can do", repeated Jay, shaking his head. It seemed to be his mantra for tonight. Fuck it, he thought, angrily. Fuck this shit. He turned to Alex, and kissed him again, hungrily. Alex responded, running his fingertips through Jay's hair.   
  
Jay thought it was a measure of how messed up they both were that they could go from discussing the murder and insanity of former friends to having sex in a matter of moments. This time it was Alex lying back on the mattress and Jay whose hands roved over Alex's body, unclothing him slowly and precisely.  
  
"Jay..." Alex whispered, as Jay covered his chest with kisses. He moved lower, glancing up at Alex to gauge his reaction. "God, don't stop", Alex moaned. So Jay moved lower still, lips brushing taut stomach and hip bones...

***

Jay awoke shivering. Alex was asleep next to him, his back to him. Very little light permeated the room: the windows were boarded up, and the candles had burned out. Jay didn't know what had happened to the flashlight. Slowly, trying not to disturb Alex, he got up and began pulling on his clothes. He froze as Alex sighed in his sleep, but quickly continued dressing. He picked up his phone and found the battery was flat. Great. He shouldered his camera and took one last, lingering look at Alex. Asleep, he looked somehow young and vulnerable: not the secretive, furious young man he had become in the last couple of years.   
  
He left the house hurriedly, before his nerve failed him.  
  
The woods looked totally different in the pale morning light. A light mist hung below the trees. He started walking in what he hoped was the right direction. At one point, a sudden coughing fit brought him to a stand still. He made sure to stay alert as he walked, but as far as he could tell, he encountered no one until he got to the main road.  
  
The walk along the main road seemed to take less time than it had taken him and Alex the night before. Thirty minutes later, he was back at his car, fully prepared to search for his keys with the aid of daylight. However, as he walked up to his car, he was surprised to find the driver's side door unlocked and open. Inside, on the dashboard, were his keys and Alex's keys. Next to them was a tape Jay recognised as the one he had tried to take from Alex's apartment. It was lying on top of a piece of note paper. Jay picked up the paper. In shaky handwriting were the words: "Your tape. Regards."  
  
The O in the word "Your" had a cross through it.   
  
Jay left Alex's keys on the hood of his car. He ran back to his own car, turned the ignition and drove away. He didn't stop.

**Author's Note:**

> With entry #50 we found out that the key Jay stole from Alex was actually a spare front door key for Alex's house. I think I preferred my version..


End file.
